That is what is being claimed in the below article to explain the reduction in subsidies that all the cell phone carriers in South Korea implemented for the release of the new iPhone 6S which has increased the overall cost of the smartphone:
Prospective buyers of iPhone 6s line up in front of the KT headquarters in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, on Friday. The increased cost of the new phones wasn’t enough to deter these anxious buyers who lined up for the latest Apple release. [KANG JUNG-HYUN]Apple’s latest iPhone 6s made headlines earlier this week when preorder sales sold out in a record seven minutes. But the smartphone and the larger iPhone 6s Plus are being sold with a subsidy that is roughly 40 percent less than the previous model that went on sale a year ago.
The new phones are also 20,000 won ($18) to 30,000 won more expensive than the earlier release.
The nation’s three mobile carriers – SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ – unveiled on Friday the subsidies and price of the latest Apple smartphones as they started official in-store sales of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.
The mobile carriers set the maximum subsidies on both models between 120,000 won and 130,000 won – much less than the subsidy provided on the iPhone 6 last year, which was in the 100,000 won to 200,000 won range. In the case of KT, the maximum subsidy it provided on the iPhone 6 last year was 250,000 won.
The slashed subsidies went against earlier market expectations of substantial subsidies on Apple’s new smartphones due to keen competition among mobile carriers to hijack one another’s customers.
Mobile carriers and the Korean manufacturer gave different answers for reasons why subsidies have been slashed almost in half.
“It was largely the result of Samsung Electronics’ influence to keep Apple in check,” said a mobile carrier official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The mobile carriers said the Korean smartphone maker made an unofficial request to limit the subsidies on iPhones, and the mobile carriers can’t refuse because Samsung Electronics is the biggest smartphone supplier. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This is really not a surprise at all because the truth about how these reunions came about to stop the ROK’s propaganda broadcasts is not something that the Kim regime can have the average North Korean learn about:
When it comes to news, the two countries could hardly be more different, as evidenced by Wednesday’s papers.
South Korea has more than 100 newspapers and even more online news outlets, and South Koreans are constantly on their smart phones checking the latest headlines.
In the North, however, there’s the state-run wire service, the Korean Central News Agency, the official TV station, Korean Central Television and the main newspaper, the Rodong Sinmum. And all of them feature a heavy diet of Kim Jong Un news.
But what was reported about the reunions also differed sharply.
South Korean outlets focused on the personal stories of the separated families, especially on the reunion of Lee Soon-gyu, who got to see her husband Oh In Se for the first time since 1950, when she was 19 and six months pregnant.
But North Korean state media used the occasion to trumpet their “socialist system” and the wise leadership of Kim Jong Un.
“Those from the north told their separated families and relatives from the south about the fact that they and their families are enjoying a happy and worthwhile life in the Korean-style socialist system,” KCNA reported.
Uriminzokkiri, a Web site affiliated with North Korea, also ran with the same message about how great life is in Kim Jong Un’s socialist paradise.
And of course, North Korea took the credit for the reunions happening at all (only scant mention of the South Korean Red Cross, which did the organizing, or the fact that these reunions happened so Kim Jong Un could stop potentially destabilizing broadcasts from the South.) [The Washington Post]
Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, U.S. Forces Korea commander provides a lecture on leadership to United States Military Academy cadets during a Comparative Politics class Oct. 19. [USFK Facebook]
In this photo provided on Oct. 20, 2015, by the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, South Korean President Park Chung-hee (far L), the late father of incumbent President Park Geun-hye, and his wife Yook Young-su (2nd from R) pose for a photo with U.S. President Lyndon Johnson (far R) and his wife Lady Bird Johnson during Park’s visit to Washington, D.C. for talks with Johnson in 1965. The photo is part of a photo album that Lloyd Nelson Hand, a former U.S. chief of protocol under Johnson, gave the younger Park on Oct. 16, the last day of her visit to Washington for talks with U.S. President Barack Obama. (Yonhap)
The AP has an article posted about the rise of non-governmental North Korea analysts with names some ROK Heads may recognize:
In an anonymous office building in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, in a part of Colorado where cattle ranches fade into strip malls, a gravel-voiced man with a Brooklyn accent is moving through the streets of Pyongyang.
Joe Bermudez is staring into a computer screen at a detailed satellite image, maneuvering his cursor past guarded checkpoints and into restricted neighborhoods where the North Korean elite live behind high concrete walls. Looking down on the city from more than 250 miles up, he lingers over what he believes is the private airport of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young leader, pointing out a pair of VIP helicopters and a Soviet-era biplane. He moves north, jumping across the countryside and picking out hidden tunnels, walled compounds and a small flotilla of military hovercraft designed to storm South Korea’s beaches.
“Driving around,” he calls it when he follows roads in search of something new, humming absent-mindedly as his eyes flick across the screen.
Bermudez is a watcher, one of the largely anonymous tribe of researchers who study North Korea, one of the world’s most isolated nations. There’s Michael Madden, a largely self-taught analyst with an encyclopedic knowledge of the government elite, and Curtis Melvin, whose research ranges from monetary policy to electricity grids and who shambles through the buttoned-down Washington think tank where he works in jeans and a frayed T-shirt. There’s Adam Cathcart at Britain’s University of Leeds and Cheong Seong-Chang at the Sejong Institute outside Seoul. There’s the longtime U.S. intelligence officer, a man quietly revered by many in these circles, who now writes Pyongyang crime novels under the pseudonym James Church.
They are university professors, think tank analysts and writers for a string of North Korea-centric websites. They are collaborators and competitors. They are the Kremlinologists of Pyongyang.
And they insist North Korea is nowhere near as mysterious as you think it is. At least not always.
“North Korea is a very secretive place. But it’s not as secretive as many people believe,” says Andrei Lankov, a Russian-born professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. “It’s much, much easier now to get information.” [Associated Press]
President Park Geun-hye (R) talks with actress Ha Ji-won wearing a “hanbok,” the traditional Korean dress, during a fashion show at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Oct. 21, 2015. (Yonhap)
